The Water Environment Research Foundation has recently stated that Wastewater Treatment (WWT) operations have the potential to be net energy producers. They further stated that none of the processes available today can fully extract all of the energy that is available in wastewater.

Although attempts are ongoing toward that energy potential, current operations are inherently limited by their inability to separate and recover the energy latent 0.2 μm to 30 μm organic solids, as shown in the Filtration Spectrum, from which to extract the available energy — more than 1,400 kWh per million gallons (MG) of wastewater processed.